Beau Dodson's weather analysis for the southern Illinois and western Kentucky area.

February 20, 2013: Cold today - chance precip Thursday

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By Beau Dodson

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Feb. 19, 2013
12:01 a.m.

February 20, 2013This blog is best viewed with Mozilla Firefox. There could be issues with spacing on Internet Explorer

Good Wednesday, everyone. It will be colder today. The good news is that it will be dry. This is ahead of our next storm system that will arrive on Thursday.A storm system will pull out of the Central United States over the next 24-48 hours. This system will spread a large band of heavy snow and ice across portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois. Thankfully the heaviest part of the storm will miss our region.We can expect some light wintry mix to develop on Thursday morning - mainly over southeast Missouri. This may slip into parts of southern Illinois and western Kentucky. This first band of precipitation would be on the light side.The main action won't arrive until Thursday afternoon. By then temperatures will have warmed a few degrees. This will help keep the amount of frozen precipitation to a minimum over far southern Illinois and far southeast Missouri - and western Kentucky.The best chance for there to be travel problems would be from near Poplar Bluff, MO torwards Cape Girardeau, MO and then towards Route 13 in southern Illinois. North of that line could have some accumulation of sleet and freezing rain - snow.Monitor updates - a few advisories may have to be issued if the NWS believes there will be enough precipitation for travel problemsQuestions remain on this storm - the timing - temperature profiles. Friday will dry out - it will be cool into the weekend. We will see a bit of a warm up by Sunday ahead of our next area of low pressure. That one will bring rain and perhaps even thunderstorms.Another system around next Thursday could bring snow. Plenty of time to monitor updates on that particular system.Winter is far from finished in our region. Lot of cold air over the coming weeks. I know some of you would like to experience spring.

Tomorrow: Severe weather is not anticipated. A wintry mix is likely across our region - this should change to all rain over far southeast Missouri, far southern Illinois, and western Kentucky. The timing of the changeover will need to be monitored.

We have a number of new radars available on our Weather Observatory web-site !--- We now offer St Louis, Mt Vernon, Evansville, Poplar Bluff, Cape Girardeau, Marion, Paducah, Hopkinsville, Memphis, Nashville, and Dyersburg Interactive City Radars. I have added all of eastern Kentucky, as well.We also have the two regional radars and now offer you three GR Earth radars.Click here for our radar page - WEATHER RADARS------ We also have a new interactive radar - you can view that radar by clicking here.

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Want to learn more about how to use our radars? Here is a video with more information

The links above are interactive and you can move around the United States by simply clicking on the national map - or from the pull down menu where it says regions and US States..To view the interactive warning map - click here..

.You can also now view the probability of X amount of rain (you pick the value on the web-site) in a six hour period of time. Those maps can be viewed here. .Current conditions - including temperatures, apparent temperatures, heat index, wind chill, wind, pressure, humidity, dew points, and more - click here.

If you are a weather enthusiast then I recommend listening to WeatherBrains each week! For a more in-depth look at what is happening in meteorology.

Now is a GREAT time to buy a NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio. Better to have one before storms strike than to be without one during an event. I recommend the Midland Model 300 NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio - that is what I use here at my house!